CD Players and Changers
The initial idea for the design and implementation of this system arose from having accumulated several hundred CDs, and the frustration of having only a small portion of this collection available at one time in a fifty-CD changer (jukebox). This frustration was compounded by the fundamental limitation of CD changers in that virtually all changers play CDs sequentially; they provide no way to favor certain favorite tracks over others, nor do they provide any way to skip tracks that may be particularly disliked.
Listening to a CD takes about an hour as the CD player plays each track in sequence from beginning to end. As a result, once a group of preferred CDs is found, even if there are a few tracks on each CD that one would rather skip, one tends to listen to a sequence of CDs over and over again, effectively limiting the selection of music to that subset of eight to ten CDs.
Another limitation of CD changers is that one often hears a track and would like to know the name of the song, who played it, or in which year it was released. Some CDs are encoded with album name, track title, and artist using the CD-Text format, but many CD players have no way to display it. As a result most CD publishers do not bother to encode their CDs with CD-Text. Usually the only way to find out what is being played and who is playing it is to eject the CD and read the title off the CD. This is time-consuming and very disruptive to just enjoying the music; most listeners just do not bother.
Finally, CDs in a changer are not portable: to listen to some of the same CDs in the car or at a friend's house, one must eject them from the changer and carry them to the car or to the friend's home. This process is cumbersome and raises the possibility that the CDs may be lost or damaged in the process.
Personal Computer-Based Downloaded Music
During the early part of this decade, it became popular to download music from various file-sharing websites into personal computers, playing it from those systems. The most significant issue with this approach was that there was no control over how many copies were downloaded and the lack of any payment for copyrighted music.
After the most notorious “free” music download websites were shut down (after litigation by artists and music distributors), the websites that remain have adopted either a pay-per-track model, or a monthly fee model in which subscribers can download as much as they want for a set monthly fee. These sites are very popular and sell a lot of music tracks, and account for a significant portion of music industry revenue. That said, it is questionable that the monthly-fee business model generates a proper level of revenue for the music distributors or royalties for the artists.
The usability of these sites vary, but they all require their users to boot up and/or sign on to their systems, start their web browser, and navigate to a website. They then search for the music desired, download the tracks into their personal computer, organize them into “playlists”, and (finally) play the music. The music tracks are stored in files on the user's hard drive and go wherever the computer goes: if a laptop, the music is portable. However, whether stored on a desktop or a laptop the user must back up the hard drive frequently, or the music collection will be a total loss when the hard drive fails.
While there are a lot of technically-oriented people that enjoy signing on, downloading, etc., etc., there is a larger number of people for which even a bit of “technical rigmarole” is confusing and unacceptable.
Computer-Loaded Portable Players
Portable players are generally an extension of downloaded music, mentioned above. While Portable Players include MP3 players, music-capable cell phones, and various other gadgets, the most prominent solution of downloaded music and portable players is Apple's integrated iTunes/iPod combination. Microsoft also released a somewhat less popular combination of Windows Media and the MP3/WMA-based Zune.
Portable players are very popular, and the iPod (and its MP3-based cousins) have become ubiquitous. Their primary disadvantage is that only one person can listen to a portable player at a time; listening to one's iPod or MP3 player is not a shared experience. In fact, piping music directly into one's ears tends to be an isolating experience, and it is not uncommon to see couples listening to their iPods, not speaking, while listening to entirely different music.
To address this social deficiency, a number of manufacturers are selling “docks” for these portable music players. Users can place their iPod/MP3 player in a cradle, connecting it to an external audio amplifier and speakers instead of playing through the usual ear-bud headset. However, this still means that the music everybody listens to is the music of the person that downloaded it and put it into playlists loaded into that one iPod/MP3 player. No allowance for the differing musical tastes of other listeners is possible.
High-End Music Player Systems
A number of manufacturers have developed high-end systems for playing music. Usually these systems are a bit pricey, focused on high-income customers with relatively new homes that include media rooms, built-in wiring, built-in control panels in the rooms, and the like. These include:                The Olive music player, which is a computer-like “box” that can be added to a customer's music system. The main functions of this system are to allow a user to load his/her own CDs into the device, and then play them through the customer's existing music system. The device provides an Internet connection enabling the system to identify each CD as it is loaded, checking against the Gracenote database to identify album, artist and track information. The system also provides the ability to display album covers on a small display.        The Olive music player includes a remote control allowing up to two users (one at a time) to vote for/against tracks that are liked or disliked. For more than one user to vote, the user must locate the remote, switch to his/her setting, and cast the vote.        Although we can assume that one remote would work with another Olive music player, it is not clear that the Olive can handle more than one remote at a time (one switched for the votes of one user, and one for another), nor what the effect of multiple remotes on an Olive would be.        The Bose Lifestyle system is a more complete system than the Olive, including not only a music player, but a high quality amplifier and small (but excellent) wall-mountable cube speakers as well. This system also has an Internet connection, enabling the system to identify each CD as it is loaded. Interestingly, the system also functions as a CD and DVD player, so that album covers and artwork may be displayed on an attached television set (not included).        Like the Olive music player, the Bose Lifestyle system also includes a remote control, but this one allows up to ten users (one at a time) to vote for/against tracks that are liked or disliked. For more than one user to vote, each user must locate the remote, switch to his/her setting, and cast the vote.        Many of us understand how difficult it can be to share a remote and can imagine how having more than a couple of users sharing a single remote to cast votes could be difficult: it is likely that most votes would never be cast because it would not be seen as worth the bother.        As with the Olive, it is also not clear that the Bose Lifestyle system can handle more than one remote at a time, nor what the effect of multiple remotes on the Bose Lifestyle system would be.        Patent US 2005/0197725 (issued Sep. 8, 2005) describes a system and process allowing users to play up to two streams of media to up to two locations. The described system focuses on a relatively high-end system with a touch screen that allows users to create playlists for themselves. Much of the patent document describes the process for loading and tagging tracks with descriptive metadata. Another area discussed in detail is the process of cross-fading between tracks, a standard practice of broadcast engineers and disc jockeys.        There is no discussion of Remote Controls; apparently they are not relevant, or all system control is performed through the touch screen.        U.S. Pat. No. 7,216,178 B2 (issued May 8, 2007) describes a broad collection of concepts, methods, and hardware to implement a fully-controlled means for playing and distributing music. A core aspect of the described invention assigns unique identifiers to proprietary music-playing devices, commercial off-the-shelf and proprietary software, and PDA-based remote controlling units. Another aspect embeds “unique identifiers” into musical track files so that any “unauthorized” copies can be traced back to the person creating the copy. The patent goes on to briefly describe some scheme for labeling music downloaded to a proprietary playing device with yet another unique identifier. Yet another aspect discusses distribution and display of music and program guides, television program guides, and so on.        The issued patent seems overly broad, yet does not describe any aspect of the system—except possibly the selection of now obsolete PC-class hardware components—to any level of detail such that anyone “skilled in the art” could reproduce the system. The described invention also requires that every aspect of the invention be based on configurations of proprietary hardware/software, and that every transaction at every level of the invention take place between authorized individuals, and using authorized, proprietary hardware and software.        In contrast, the only proprietary hardware element of the Invention described herein is the uniquely-identified Remote Control, which serves to identify authorized Users as described in the following sections. All other hardware is non-proprietary; the proprietary value of the Invention is contained in the software running the System(s) and Service, and the Service itself.Remote Controls for Music Systems        
Most remote controls for televisions, music players, audio systems, and similar devices and systems use a modulated infrared LED to transmit commands and information between the remote control and the devices addressed. The standard protocol for communications between remote and the controlled devices is defined by IEEE-1394.
More recently, a Bluetooth-based profile (a protocol layer), the Audio-Visual Remote Control Profile (AVRCP) protocol, has been defined for communications between a Bluetooth-based remote control and its controlled devices by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG). However, few, if any, commercial Bluetooth devices supporting the AVRCP profile have been reduced to practice and put into production in any scale.                U.S. Pat. No. 6,781,063 (issued Mar. 22, 2005) describes a method for controlling access to a computer system using a short-range wireless device, such as a mobile telephone, connecting to a computer system. User authentication is generated by use of a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM card) in the mobile telephone, which is uniquely identified to the user, usually by his/her mobile telephone service provider.        Patent US 2005/0278547 (issued Dec. 15, 2005) describes a method for establishing an identity using a personal short-range wireless device, such as a cellular telephone or other device. The described invention is not specific to using Bluetooth protocol, allows use of infrared and other wireless transmission means. What is key here is that the device itself is not sufficient for establishing identity; the user must still validate his/her identity by providing a password or some other token to validate his/her identity.        
In direct contrast, the Remote Control Device described by this Application, uses the Bluetooth protocol and the AVRCP profile. However, this Invention goes further, in that all addresses of authorized Remote Control Devices are known to the Service, and these authorized Remote Control Devices are individually issued and assigned to its Subscribing Users. Thus, the Service and System embodied in this Invention is able to use the unique address of the Bluetooth device itself as sufficient to establish the identity and presence of the Subscribing User as it connects to any Subscriber's Music Playing Device, at any point in the network worldwide.